Idiotic response to a positive proposal

Five Chinese Crackers covers the tabloid response to the recent NUT faith education proposal. I did start writing a piece after reading the Guardian’s write-up of it, by which account it seems to be a reasonable and moderate proposal, but didn’t read the Express’s website or the Mail’s coverage. The Spew not only used the headline “Koran to be taught in schools”, as if it were going to be taught in all schools to everyone, but they titled their on-line “Have Your Say” page on the subject “Should imams teach our children?” and accompanied it with a scarily-lit picture of Abu Hamza.

For my part, I think the proposals are a good compromise, not because I (unlike the NUT’s general secretary) don’t want to see more Islamic schools open, but because seeing many more is not a realistic goal in today’s world, especially if we want to see them become state-maintained schools. Those which exist today started out as private schools, and a handful of them eventually became state schools, but they teach a tiny minority of the Muslims of their area, let alone the country, and most Muslims do not have the resources to pay for school fees. On top of this, some private Muslim schools (here and in North America) have a bad reputation even among Muslims. So, it is reasonable that people should be brought in to teach them during the school day, so they will have less to do in the evening when they may well be tired and/or burdened with school homework.

The proposal would also take into account the existence of de facto Muslim schools which are in fact ordinary schools located in primarily Muslim areas but which do not teach religion. Even elsewhere, however, I am not averse to the idea of Muslim children rubbing shoulders with others - they do already - but as for the sort of kids who exist on some estates in certain parts of the country (you know, those who set fire to buildings for fun and then throw stones at the fire-fighters, that sort of thing), most Muslims would no more like their kids to be influenced by them than would the average middle-class white family.

(The irony of all this is that nowadays such a proposal is being attacked by hostile tabloids as letting Muslim imams get their hands on “their” children. In the past, it might well have been attacked by Muslims, if not in the press then in printed hand-outs in mosques and on websites, as an attempt by secular teachers to control Muslims or the teaching of Islam. I recall when the new Labour government proposed after-school “homework clubs” in 1998, there was a hand-out in my local mosque shortly afterwards denouncing it as an attack on after-school Islamic education.)

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